While it is possible to make most of the Indian style Punjabi paneer curries, soup, sauce, jam, ketchup, salsa, pasta etc. with canned tomato puree but it can not beat the taste and nutrition of freshly made puree. It is one of the very basic cooking ingredient and making it at home from farm fresh tomatoes is as easy as counting 1,2,3… Don’t believe us? keep reading…In essence, it’s just a 3 step process – Blanch, Peel and Crush. Blanching is a process to first partially cook vegetables like tomato, onion, spinach, flower etc. in hot boiling water for few minutes and then immediately transferring them to cold water. This hot to cold water transfer process makes skin peeling easier and it preserves the color, taste and nutrition of vegetables. This homemade tomato puree recipe also has step by step photos to make tomato blanching process easy to understand and follow.

Choose red, ripe and firm tomatoes, which are not sour. In this recipe, red plum tomatoes are used. Rinse them in running water to remove any debris or dirt.

Make two 1/3-inch deep cuts perpendicular to each other with knife on each tomato as shown in the picture (cuts should be made on top, not on the side). This will make peeling easier in later steps.

Fill water in a deep pan or deep pot and bring it to boil over medium flame. When it starts boiling, carefully slide tomatoes in it and boil for 3-minutes.

Turn off flame. Remove tomatoes from hot water and place them in cold water for 2-minutes. Drain water and transfer to a plate. Peel and remove the skin (start peeling from the cut portion – it come out easily because upper layer turns soft after boiling and loosens the binding with flesh.

Cut them into halves and remove the stem.

Transfer them to a jar of blender or mixer grinder.

Blend until smooth puree.

Fresh tomato puree is now ready to be used for cooking your favorite curry or soup.

Tips and Variations:

You can choose any type of ripe tomatoes to make puree.

Choose tomatoes that have more flesh and less juice – it will make thicker puree.

Tomato puree stays good for 2-3 days in refrigerator and for 1-month in the freezer section of refrigerator.